D J Webb

Looking back on my schooldays, when there was no multi-culturalism and very little promotion of any other –isms or –phobias, it is clear that the left-wing shrieking that passes for political discussion now has impaired our culture. The UK is wearing to live in, notably because of the constant political propaganda. Left-wing cultural deconstruction has sapped the joy out of our culture.

In many—non-Western—countries, the population retains an uncomplicated relationship with traditional culture and national identity. In China, for instance, a country that had its own Maoist, extremist phase, Chinese people are not yelled at for being pro-Chinese or for enjoying China’s traditional culture.

Social bonds

This makes sense, as culture is, fundamentally, a bond that unites people in a nation and keeps society healthy. It would spoil family life for members of a family to spend Sundays denouncing the family’s common pursuits. A family whose members did not wish to spend time together is a family that has become dysfunctional. Similarly, British culture, including our architectural, religious, literary and artistic culture, as well as our language, is something that we all ought to enjoy. It’s a glue that unites people in Britain. It’s something that makes social life meaningful beyond economics and money.

When we’re told that immigrants have “integrated” because they hold jobs, it is being suggested to us that we live in an economy, but not in a society and not in a culture. I’m sure there are many immigrants who work in the UK and pay taxes here. But just as you work to live, rather than live to work, the economy and the labour market are there to fund social and cultural life and paying tax is not all that integration means.

Libertarians shouldn’t be confused by this. Libertarianism is often presented as fundamentally an economic theory. As long as taxes are low, all is OK, or so some claim. In fact, a free society goes beyond economics, wages and taxes. A society where women may divorce their husbands and financially ruin them after short marriages, one where you may lose your job if you prefer British culture to foreign cultures, and one where children are subject to mendacious propaganda on various racial and sexual themes is not a free society. Economic liberty is the precondition for a free society and a free culture, but hardly a guarantee of it.

I will agree with those libertarians who point out that a small state is required to prevent too much over-the-top promotion of allegedly correct views on cultural issues. It’s better not to finance the people who will set themselves up as our overlords on such matters. I would not deny that. But I would argue that the presence of poorly integrated minorities who have been encouraged to feel aggrieved for no real reason provides a justification for state spending in this area. Consequently, cultural and economic liberty may, by the better type of libertarians, be seen as symbiotic. To exploit such a synergy, England would have to be reconceptualized as a cultural entity, with an immigration policy explicitly designed to suit this goal.

For this reason “individual freedom” works best in a nation-state, particularly one like England whose cultural origins are based on the principle of liberty (a necessarily relative principle). People may take more or less interest in the traditional culture of this country. I freely admit that interest in the Church of England is a minority pursuit in England today. I am not prescribing such to all. However, in a free nation-state, such interest should not be proscribed: adherence to England’s traditional culture is a harmless or even positive influence on the health of wider society, inasmuch as it fosters social unity without infringing on the liberty of others.

Deconstruction

Political/cultural Marxism in the twentieth century took the form of hysterical denunciation of traditional culture. Sociology departments in universities became preoccupied with the need to “deconstruct” culture in a way that exposed traditional values to ridicule and led to their marginalization. Race, sex, sexual orientation and national culture all became fertile ground for such hysteria.

A previous Conservative government sought to limit some of this anti-traditional rhetoric by means of the Clause 28 law that prevented propaganda on homosexuality in schools, a clause that ought to be brought back as soon as possible. Libertarians who claim that liberty means allowing schools to conduct anti-traditional propaganda are wide of the mark indeed. Liberty means not being exposed to propaganda on “the only correct attitudes” in the first place.

Unfortunately, the way these campaigns work is that the people conducting the shrill campaigns against traditional views believe themselves to be uniquely insightful. I noted a recent article in The Spectator by Brendan O’Neill on sex-change campaigners complaining that a film about the Greenwich Village gay movement didn’t include enough “trans women of colour” (also known as black men who have had sex-change operations and who wish to live as women).

Such views are not insightful or intelligent. They are boringly conventional. There is nothing radical about claiming that everything in the past was racist, sexist, anti-gay, or prejudiced against any other conceivable group. We are bombarded with this stuff, and to spout this rhetoric does not require the intervention of thought, just regurgitation of what you have heard in the media.

It is also a highly negative phenomenon. Everything in our culture must be run down. Worse, it is spiteful and vindictive. Because the impetus to such campaigns is a desire by the campaigner to show himself to be more moral than others—this is all ultimately grounded in the self-regard of the campaigners—it works better if the moral destruction of others can be achieved along the way. If others are destroyed, or lose their jobs, or their positions in society, you yourself are thereby accordingly advanced in the social hierarchy.

The so-called gaffe early this year when the achingly right-on actor, Benedict Cumberbatch, referred to black people as “coloured” illustrates the personal attacks, the Twitter-inspired outrage, that motivates these campaigns. These is nothing objectionable about referring to black people as “coloured”—the stupidity surrounding this has led to arguments in politically correct circles that Chinese people are “black” in the UK, as they belong to ethnic minorities, and therefore should classify themselves as part of the “black community”—and it should be borne in mind that “coloured” was a word introduced in the 1950s as a less offensive term for black people. Prior to that, “dark” and “darkies” were terms frequently found—and the word “dark” is not offensive per se either in reference to someone with dark skin.

It’s impossible to keep up with all of this, as the Cumberbatch case shows. The fact that such cultural issues are waiting, like anti-personnel mines, to explode depends on the fact that large numbers of people have been taught to look for offence. It is surely exhausting to be seeking opportunities for taking offence all the time, and yet our culture has developed in such a way that the education and media systems are used to encourage people to permanently seethe with rage against the society around them. The role of culture as a unifying factor in a society, an uncomplicated and uncontroversial backdrop to life, has been deliberately destroyed.

A sad and joyless culture is the result. To have allowed culture to become a battleground has destroyed much of the meaning of our society, which is then reduced to an economy, like a family living more or less as strangers in a hotel with few common activities on a Sunday or at other times. There is nothing libertarian about such a society, where people fear to express themselves. “Left libertarians” who claim to support freedom, but also support the deconstruction of social bonds, apparently support a social prohibition against freedom of expression in an illustration of the cul-de-sac that such views have taken us into.

An interesting example of the situation we are now in is the TV comedy show Miranda. This show is based on a single, humorous theme: the attempts of a tall, ungainly, lesbian-looking woman to attract the love of a young, handsome man. But each episode is fundamentally the same, and any jokes that would contravene the strictures of political correctness are noted for their absence from the screenplay. We are left with only marginally funny comedies, as anything else risks an explosion of culture wars.

Politics is everywhere

Social life has become thoroughly politicized, and ordinary working-class people have become far too aware of the political issues that obsess the political/media class. While it is true that libertarians are generally fairly interested in politics, I think it is also true that a free society is one where people can ignore the background chatter of politicians. A free life shouldn’t require a detailed knowledge of politics.

Ironically, Marxists once spoke of the “withering away of the state”. What we actually have is the reaching of state propaganda into every arena of life. Every sentence is a minefield. Do you say “firefighters” or “firemen”? Every choice is political. Is it “OK” to disapprove of Islam? (OK means “acceptable to the political/media elite”.) Will you get into trouble with the school or social services if you freely discuss your views on social issues in front of your children?

It seems to me that real libertarians should demand the creation of a depoliticized society, one where people are free to hold and expound whatever views they wish to. Schools should not require of pupils a detailed knowledge of politics, which is what the propaganda in schools amounts to. Arguably we should remove news from the TV channels and allow people to find their own sources of news in newspapers on and offline, to avoid the temptation to propagandize the population. Workplaces should not be permitted to conduct political propaganda or to dismiss staff on political grounds.

It is true that some of this would be interventionist: to prevent a company from dismissing a member of staff for publicizing his views on immigration on social media websites is regulatory intervention. But we are in a situation where some elementary laws are required to row back on the hysteria and allow people to live lives without politics.

Libertarians have said in the past that a free society is one where it makes no difference what government is in power, so small would the state be. But we can go further than this: the views on cultural issues of the political/media elite should become an irrelevance to the broader population. Until this happens, we are not in a free society.

The correct response of “normal” people to political propaganda from people they meet in society—neighbours, family members, work colleagues—is to loudly reject it. If you refer to “Paki shops” and someone (not a state official, but someone you interact with socially) objects, the correct response is to yell “STOP PREACHING!” until such negative social interactions stop.

This is the only way we can recreate a society where support for English culture is normal and regarded as non-objectionable. Until this is done, our society will remain an unpleasant and wearying social body, one where far too many self-righteous people seek to prove their own moral superiority by preaching to other members of the society in a way that tears society down. This is far more important than nearly everything discussed by people who declare themselves to be “libertarians”!

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